Arthur Holitscher

Arthur Holitscher

Arthur Holitscher (born August 22, 1869 in Pest , Austria-Hungary , † October 14, 1941 in Geneva ) was a Hungarian travel writer, essayist, novelist and playwright.

Life

Holitscher came from a bourgeois, Jewish merchant family and received lessons in German from a private tutor and religion lessons from a rabbi . His parents were the Budapest merchant Eduard Holitscher (approx. 1839–1899) and his niece (daughter of his sister) Hermine Altstädter (1849–1912). From the beginning he was rejected by his mother, who considered him to be a "no good". He always saw himself as an Austrian or a German, but not as a Hungarian Jew. After his school- leaving exams , he became a bank clerk in Budapest, Fiume and Vienna at the request of his parents . He gave up this job after six years.

From 1890 he began to write short stories , novellettes in the style of the German naturalists . He was interested in Gerhart Hauptmann , Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf .

Paris and Munich

Influenced by his personal and literary acquaintance with Parisian anarchists and his reading Knut Hamsuns , Holitscher became a freelance writer in Paris from 1895 . Here he felt very lonely. In the autumn of 1895, the Munich publisher Albert Langen took over his first novel, White Love . In 1896 Holitscher therefore moved to Munich and became an editor for Langen's magazine Simplicissimus . Thomas Mann is said to have observed Holitscher in order to then use him as the model for his mercilessly drawn figure Detlev Spinell in the novella Tristan (1902). In 1907 Holitscher moved to Berlin and became a lecturer at Cassirer .

Travel and Exile

As a travel writer, he first went to the USA , on behalf of Samuel Fischer (he had had a long-term contract with Fischer since 1907, which he terminated after the book was burned ). His most famous work America Today and Tomorrow emerged from this trip . With this book he achieved his literary breakthrough in 1912. Franz Kafka is said to have borrowed some details from it for his novel America .

In 1933 Holitscher's books, including his report “Three Months in Soviet Russia” (1921), were placed on the list of “literature to be eradicated” and were burned. He fled to Paris and later to Geneva. From 1939 he lived impoverished and abandoned in a quarter of the Salvation Army in Geneva, where he died on October 14, 1941 at the age of 72. Robert Musil gave the eulogy for him .

Works

The Narrenbaedeker , memorial to the book burning on the Bonn market square

• Suffering People , Novella, 1893
• White Love , novel, 1896
• The Poisoned Well , novel in 3 books, 1900
• To Beauty , 1897
• The Sentimental Adventure , 1901
• Of Lust and Death , 1902
• Charles Baudelaire , 1904
• Living with People , 1910
• The golem. Ghetto legend in three acts , 1908
• What are you waiting for? , Novel, 1910
• America Today and Tomorrow , Travel Experiences, 1912
• Stories from Two Worlds , 1914
• In England - East Prussia - South Austria. Seen and Heard , 1915
• The American Face , 1916
• Brother Wurm , 1918
• O. Wilde, Reading Penitentiary Ballad , translation, 1918
• Sleepwalker , narration 1919
• Adela Bourke's Encounter , novel, 1920
• Weekday Ideals , 1920
• Three months in Soviet Russia , 1921
• Singing to Palestine , 1922
• Downstream the Hungerwolga , 1922
• Journey through Jewish Palestine , 1922
• Ecstatic Stories , 1923
• Frans Masereel , with Stefan Zweig , 1923
• Life story of a rebel. My memories , 2 volumes, 1924
• The theater in revolutionary Russia , 1924
• The fool's decoy. Records from Paris and London , 1925
• Ravachol and the Paris anarchists , 1925
• Troubled Asia. Journey through India - China - Japan , 1926
• My life during this time (1907–1925) (autobiography, second volume), 1928
• Travel , 1928
• It happened in Moscow , Roman, 1929
• Reunion with America , 1930
• It happens in Berlin , Roman, 1931
• A man completely free , novel, 1931

literature

• Stephan Braese : German views of "Soviet Russia". The Moscow reports of Arthur Holitscher and Walter Benjamin. In: Tel Aviver Yearbook for German History , Vol. 24 (1995), pp. 117–147.
• Marianne Bruchmann: Arthur Holitscher . Dissertation. Graz 1972.
• Manfred Chobot : Arthur Holitscher (1869-1941) . In: Literature and Criticism , Vol. 5 (2004), pp. 99–111.
• Walter Fähnders: “It happened in Moscow” by Arthur Holitscher. In: Walter Fähnders, Wolfgang Klein, Nils Plath (eds.): Europe. City. Traveler. Look at travel texts 1918–1945 . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2006, pp. 85-106.
• Karlheinz Fingerhut: Experienced and Exquisite - Arthur Holitscher and Franz Kafka's depictions of America . In: Discussion Deutsch , Vol. 20 (1989), pp. 337-355.
• Anton Fleck: America, today and tomorrow. Travel experiences . In: Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 1 (1913), pp. 228–230. (on-line)
• Alfons Goldschmidt : Holitscher and Dreiser . In: Die Weltbühne , vol. 25 (1929), pp. 282–284.
• Ruth Greuner : Opponent. Profiles of left-wing journalists from the German Empire and the Weimar Republic . Book publisher Der Morgen, Berlin 1968.
• Stefan Grossmann : Arthur Holitscher. The Leninist . In: Das Tagebuch (January 8, 1921), pp. 334–336.
• Christoph Grubitz: A journey to the "ruins of the past". Paris as an apocalyptic space in the “Narrenbaedeker” by Holitscher and Masereel. In: Sigrid Lange (ed.): Space constructions in modern times. Culture - literature - film . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2001, pp. 111-134.
• Christoph Grubitz: The Reality of the Big City in 1924. Holitscher and Masereel's “Narrenbaedeker”: A thought picture . In: Gerhard R. Kaiser, Erika Tunner: Paris? Paris! Images of the French metropolis in the non-fictional German-language prose between Hermann Bahr and Joseph Roth . Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg 2002, pp. 199-217.
• Jost Hermand : Productive reading: Oskar Maria Graf's handwritten marginal notes on Arthur Holitscher's “Three Months in Soviet Russia” . In: Monthly books for German teaching, German language and literature , vol. 4 (1995), pp. 420-430.
• Klaus Herrmann : Confessions to Arthur Holitscher . In: The New Book Show. A critical series of writings. Seal, Criticism, Graphic , Vol. 5 (1927), pp. 205–212.
• Viktoria Hertling: Right across: From Dwinger to Kisch. Reports and reports about the Soviet Union from the era of the Weimar Republic . Publisher Anton Hain Meisenheim, Königstein 1982.
• Andreas Herzog: “Writing Culture” - Poetics and Politics. Arthur Holitscher's "Restless Asia" . In: KulturPoetik , Vol. 1 (2006), pp. 20-37.
• Gert Mattenklott : Time cut in wood. Arthur Holitscher and Franz Masereel . In: Neue Rundschau 2/3 (1986), pp. 125-142.
• Hans-Peter Rusing: Source research as interpretation: Holitscher and Soukup's travelogues about America and Kafka's novel “Der Verschollene” . In: Modern Austrian Literature 2 (1987), pp. 1-38.
• Eckhard Schulz:  Holitscher, Arthur. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , pp. 528-530 ( digitized version ).
• Heribert Seifert: "A wise child walks the world". Arthur Holitscher's Travels . In: Neue Deutsche Hefte 1 (1984), pp. 48–62.
• Ferenc Szász: Rilke and Arthur Holitscher . In: Blätter der Rilke-Gesellschaft 23 (2000), pp. 65-77.
• Rolf Tauscher: Literary satire of exile against National Socialism and Hitler Germany . Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 1992, pp. 26-34.
• Kurt Tucholsky : America today and tomorrow . In: Vorwärts (November 8, 1912). Available online at: Review
• Kurt Tucholsky (under the pseudonym "Peter Panter"): life story of a rebel . In: Weltbühne 26 (1925), p. 966. (online)
• Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books . Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 , pp. 105-110.

Web links

• Literature by and about Arthur Holitscher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Arthur Holitscher in the Gutenberg-DE project
• 6 works online at archive.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books . Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008. pp. 105-107.